The Price of Politics

by Bob Woodward (Simon & Schuster)

“Let’s not do this again,” Barack Obama says toward the end of Woodward’s account of the 2011 debt-ceiling negotiations, during which the United States came close to defaulting. In previous books, Woodward has restaged historical dramas played out in Washington offices, but here tax-cut and spending-cut numbers are thrown around with little sense of what’s at stake. One learns about a call received in a McDonald’s or about how the President was put on mute, but it is only at the end, in a cri de coeur from Timothy Geithner, that the global consequences of default become clear. Perhaps the familiarity of Woodward’s method has begun to shape what his interlocutors tell him: recollected emotions often dovetail conveniently with talking points. Much regard is given to Eric Cantor’s tender feelings; Paul Ryan is shocked by Obama’s “demagoguery.” Woodward, who has here the elements of a devastating study of Washingtonian pettiness, has instead written a book that in many ways exemplifies it. ♦

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